IMPRIMIS Because Ideas Have Consequences Hillsdale College Hillsdale, Michigan 49242 Volume 15, No. 3 March, 1986 POPULAR CULTURE AND THE "SUICIDE OF THE WEST" by Joseph Sobran Editor's Preview: This address is the last in a series reprinted from the Shavano Institute's conference, "Moral Equivalence: False Images of U.S. and Soviet Values," held in Washington, D.C. in May of 1985. One of theJorty-five participants, Joseph Sobran, _presents his charge that fascism, not "moral equivalence" is the straw man that popular culture has attacked for over a decade. Mr. Sobran notes that although public sentiment is critical of communism and refutes any alleged equiva­ lence between democratic and communist systems, movie­ makers and other purveyors of popular culture seldom yield to this, preferring to deplore Nazism and "its heirs in the West." For these individuals and for the liberal community, it is "safe" to deplore Hitler because it helps them to evade condemning communism, acknowledging its victims, and facing its full horror. Yet, says Mr. Sobran, communism has murdered several times as many people as Nazism. Ironically, Americans are more shocked by the excesses of Joseph McCarthy than Josef Stalin, and it is our popular culture which seeks to convince us that we would be hypocritical Cold War mentality. Most Hollywood movies with politi­ if we felt any other way. cal or heavy social themes have a left-wing slant. This is true even though the great majority of such movies have A few weeks ago I saw The Killing Fields-the first been box office flops, while the right-wing themes of movie in memory to depict communist atrocities. As you Clint Eastwood and Charles Bronson movies have been probably know, it's about Cambodia after the Khmer tremendous successes. Rouge victory. It shows re-education camps, mass Long after our boys in Europe were-demobilize , murders, piles of corpses-characteristic horrors of com­ Hollywood was still fighting fascism. This catch-all munism. Only one thing is missing: the word "commu­ category includes anything opposed to the Left. Some­ nism." The movie studiously avoids it. It seems to blame times the fascist role is played by the CIA, as in Three all this killing on little Asiatic fanatics, with no hint that Days of the Condor. Sometimes it's the House on Un­ their leaders were acting out the classic pattern of an American Activities Committee, as in The Front. It can ideology they had picked up in the West, in Paris, to be be the military, as in Apocalypse Now. It can be a right­ precise. wing government abroad, as in Missing, or the nuclear You can see almost anything in movies these days. The power industry, as in The China Syndrome. Richard law even tolerates hard-core porn. But there seems to be Nixon has been used as a looming quasi-fascist figure in an unwritten law against hard-core anti-communism. the background of a number of movies. The Killing Sometimes I wonder if there's some sort of ideological Fields tries to blame the fate of Cambodia at least part­ Hays Office operating in Hollywood, protecting the view­ ly on him. At times the fascist theme is fantastically ing public from the indecorous manifestations of the literal. In The Boys from Brazil and Marathon Man, old

Imprimis (im·'pri-mas), taking its name from the Latin term for "in the first place," is the publication of Hillsdale College's Center for Constructive Alternatives and the Shavano Institute for National Leadership. Circulation 117,000 worldwide, established 1972. Complimentary subscriptions available. Nazis make a comeback. Both these films made mere­ jail: they're really in perfect accord with the whole culture flect that if a handful of German octogenerians holed up of evasion. in a South American hideout are really capable of tak­ Yet communism has murdered several times as many ing over the world, we ought to give them some credit: people as Nazism. It continues to extinguish every They really are the master race after all. freedom liberalism once stood for-freedom of religion, Hollywood imputes to fascism a kind of evil magic that of the press, of political criticism and opposition. o'erleaps the normal rules of causality and makes even Ironically, liberalism protests infringements of these isolated, superannuated Nazis a clear and present danger. freedoms only in anti-communist countries. In The Boys from Brazil, Joseph Mengele threatens the Thirty years ago, the philosopher Sidney Hook wrote world by cloning a number of kids from tissue saved that to be liberal is to be, almost by definition, anti­ from Der Fuehrer's body. The movie's profound grasp communist as well as anti-fascist. But today, the phrase of racial science can be inferred from the fact that each "liberal anti-communism" sounds less like a redundan­ and every one of these boys is an insufferable brat. cy than a contradiction in terms. To be anti-communist Movies like these have a profoundly consoling quali­ is to be immediately labeled a "right-winger." What we ty. Hollywood movies may seem to have gotten more now call liberalism is less like the old liberalism than like realistic than in the days of Irving Thalberg and Cecil B. the old fellow-traveling. Contemporary liberalism follows DeMille, but in a deeper sense they are really the same the contours of communism. If this were merely a mat­ as ever in catering to wishful thinking, in evading reali­ ter of hypocrisy in the liberal community, it might not ty, in confirming a sentimental worldview. They present be much of a problem. But I am afraid that it goes deeper sex obsessively, but without the complications of love, than that. It is now a problem in our culture: we live with jealousy, marriage, birth, loyalty, divorce, abandonment, our minds in concrete, and we don't even notice that we disease, and neurosis that attend it in serious literature are carrying contradictions in our souls. The infection of and drama. They represent politics without recognizing our language, our moral habits, our very thoughts, the largest political reality in the world today: com­ touches even conservative anti-communists. We take for munism. They finger the eternal enemy as a generic granted things that ought to startle and shame us. fascism, a force long since discredited and vanquished in Recently we celebrated our famous victory in Europe the real world. A real movie about communism would be with our old allies-the same Soviets who helped Hitler so unsettling that it probably wouldn't even find a launch the war with an invasion of Poland; the same distributor. Soviet Union that remains, after forty years, the proud Hollywood is rich in fantasies but impoverished in gen­ possessor of Poland. What on earth were we celebrating? uine ideals-ideals seriously related to moral standards. The defeat of Hitler. But by whom? And for what pur­ Eugene Methvin has recently written that the diaboliza­ pose? The diabolization of Hitler robs us of our critical tion of Hitler in the current culture is actually an evasion, faculties. It deprives us of the power to make the kind of an instance of what the psychologist Harry Stack Sullivan comparisons a healthy moral instinct would make almost called "selective inattention." It spares us the pain of fac­ automatically. ing a larger, blacker, and present evil. Hitler is safe. We Thus we react with shock if a lone eccentric wears a can all deplore him without risk. Hollywood's Fondas, swastika. We recognize it as an act of obscene perversi­ Brandos, and Coppolas can safely strike their moral ty even to associate oneself with a mere symbol of postures against fascism by adopting the current Party Nazism. Imagine how we'd feel if a new regime in Cen­ line and pretending that fascism'~ heirs are now in the tral America were to raise a flag with that hated insignia West. They know these bold gestures won't land them in and to make noises about racial purity and the interna­ tional Jewish money power. Would we listen seriously to About the Author the argument by some Americans that, after all, Nazism Joseph So bran earned his degree in English wasn't monolithic? That Hitler was only an aberration literature at Eastern Michigan University before whose excesses might be avoided in the future? That the going on to become one of the youngest editors at neo-Nazi regime represented the "legitimate aspirations" National Review in 1972. He is currently Senior of the people, or that it was an "indigenous force?" Editor at the magazine and is a regular contributor When an individual or a regime deliberately chooses to Human Life Review. His articles have appeared association with communist symbols, we are not equal­ in Harper's, the New York Times, Center Journal, ly shocked. We feel little, if any, horror at the implied The American Spectator, the National Catholic link with nearly seventy years of slavery, aggression, and Register, and Commonweal. He recently published megamurder, still in progress. We simply don't recognize Single Issues: Essays on the Crucial Social Ques­ communism as blasphemy against God and a brutal tions. He speaks frequently to college and public threat to all humanity. We are not scandalized by the audiences on a variety of topics and can be heard presence of large communist parties in Western democ­ weekly on the CBS radio program, Spectrum. racies, although we wouldn't tolerate large neo-Nazi par­ ties for a week. 2 Hitler remains a magnetic symbol of evil. But com­ good and evil serves the interest of evil. (Not that this munism has somehow remained semi-respectable. Good equation is consistently made: Sometimes we are ad­ liberals shed no tears for its victims, strike no moral monished that we mustn't act like them by meeting force postures before its embassies. Instead, they make excuses with force. This too serves the interests of communism. for it and ridicule serious concern about it. To denounce And so we tell ourselves alternately that we're no better South Africa or Chile is to "speak out" and to earn than they are or that we are indeed better than they are, moral credit. To denounce the Soviet Union, however, depending on which proposition will be most helpful, at is to be "strident." Many of those who talk about the a given moment, to our enemy.) "crime of silence" during the Nazi era practically demand We even speak of American communists as more sin­ silence about communism. The refugee from Nazism or ned against than sinning. They are "dissenters," "victims even the visitor from South Africa is presumed to speak of McCarthyism." This is the message of Daniel and The with the moral authority of a first-hand witness and vic­ Front. We watch American-made documentaries about tim; the refugee from communism is treated as a warped old communists who idealize themselves and recall how personality if he speaks solely of his own narrow ex­ cruelly they were persecuted, being jailed or fired from perience. Elie Wiesel is a prophet; Aleksandr Solzhenit­ jobs or simply forced to identify themselves as com­ syn is obsessed. munists at a public hearing. This is considered persecu­ It's true that in the nuclear age we have to find a way tion by those who defended Stalin's death sentences for to-shaz:e the__planet dth the Soviet~ even if they aren~ whole classes of "class enemies" and who were working themselves eager to share; the French scholar Jean­ to extend his power to this country. Tney fail eel to make Francais Revel has observed that communism's proper­ America red. And their impotence wasn't innocence. But ty rights command universal respect. If the Nazis had sur­ the very word "McCarthyism" has come to incorporate vived the war and gotten the atomic bomb, we might also the assumption that it is a form of persecution to iden­ have had to make practical accommodations with them. tify a communist as a communist. But that would not have changed the moral nature of the The Soviet Union itself has applied for, and received National Socialist regime any more than the necessi"ty of from liberal opinion, accredited victim status. It allegedly negotiating with a kidnapper confers moral respectability lost 20 million people during World War II, therefore, on kidnapping. it is afraid of war. By this logic, it should be afraid of But with communism, the West has shown the communism, since it has lost more than 20 million to hostage's abject tendency to see the kidnapper's point of communism. We hear a good deal about Soviet paranoia: view. What we call liberalism is no longer distinguished Unlike anti-communist paranoia, the Soviet brand is to by its dedication to freedom everywhere: it is distinguish­ be excused and humored. The Soviets only built up their ed by its abiding refusal to condemn communism moral­ nuclear arsenal because they wanted parity with us, we ly, unequivocally, in principle. It virtually worships the were once told. Those who made this argument now Soviet Union as a death-god, a Moloch, always to be pro­ know they were wrong, and they do not remind us of pitiated, never to be opposed or provoked. We must their error; they have simply advanced to other absurd­ never "over-react." ities, such as the rationale that Soviet invasion of Even President Reagan has publicly accepted the Afghanistan was "defensive." Did Hitler defend himself burden of assuring the Soviets that we don't mean them against Czechoslovakia and Poland and Austria? Con­ any harm. No doubt it was as a slip of the tongue, but stant Soviet vilification of the United States is written off it shows the way our tongues now tend to slip. We give as "mere" propaganda, because it is a pack of lies. When communism the benefit of every doubt. Revel has also President Reagan criticizes the Soviets, however, libera remarked that whereas we judge other regimes by their opinion mugs him and repeats his words endlessly as records, we judge communism by its promises. Its entire putative "gaffes," if not outright provocation. How can historical record is inadmissible evidence. a man who talks like that sincerely want peace? Popular sentiment, as the historian John Lukacs Embarrassing the President has become the standard reminds us, the frank and spontaneous sentiment we ex­ activity of the news media and the prestige press. Con­ press privately among our friends-differs sharply from servatives sense bias in journalism, and they are right; but the lofty abstractions we maintain before strangers, to the they talk about it in terms of "accuracy in media." The pollsters, and on the editorial page. Popular sentiment is problem is not inaccuracy. The information we get is anti-communist, as the success of the rare anti-communist usually accurate enough. The problem is that minions of movie like Red Dawn makes clear. Everyone knows what the media are constantly digging for facts, leaks, "gaf­ communism is like. But at the level of quasi-official fes," and other trivia that will put conservative and anti­ public speech, we ignore the realities and talk of "Soviet communist forces and indeed the entire American tradi­ leaders," "the two superpowers," and the like, as if the tion in the worst light. Liberals and communists are two systems were analogous. "Public opinion," which is spared this kind of gaffe research. Mr. Reagan and really the dialect of the mass communications media, Jesse Helms, not Tip O'Neill and Ron Dellums, are the easily equates the two superpowers. But the equation of targets of the investigative reporters and expose special- 3 ists; the CIA is embarrassed, not the KGB; the sins of our thirty-year exception to the laws of historical inevitability. allies, not our enemies, must be brought to light. And The slightest overstatement in criticizing communism how many "corrupt and repressive" pro-American is taken, in this hothouse culture, to invalidate everything regimes have fallen to communist regimes that, much to else. When it comes to fascism, however, or even the our recurrent surprise, turn out to be infinitely more American way of life, no hyperbole of condemnation can repressive? Once you grasp that contemporary journal­ go too far, no shortcoming can be overlooked, no icon ism is in the business of embarrassing people, the pattern can pass unassaulted. When the President has made so of bias is fully disclosed. As James Burnham has formu­ bold as to attack the Soviet Union, no liberal commen­ lated "the iron law of liberalism," the preferred enemy tator bothered to confront the question of whether his is always to the right. charges were true. He was guilty of sins of sheer tone­ Our popular culture is not a folk culture. It is a mass­ sins for which the Left isn't held responsible. The media marketed culture that combines pandering and propagan­ worked overtime to turn the President's words into em­ dizing. It's directed at the moderately educated who im­ barrassments. When congressmen and senators go to bibe the fictions of liberal public opinion at college and Moscow and Managua and return with the conviction can hardly imagine another way of looking at or talking that the communists really want peace, the ''adversary about the world. Some of the Contras in Nicaragua aren't press" doesn't ask critical questions. The communists' very nice, so we can't support them, can we? Yet, liberal and liberals' motives aren't in question; the anti­ public opinion had no such scruples about supporting communists' are. Stalin against-Hitler, or aboutirade credits to the Soviet I was amused a few months ago to discover that Karl bloc. We are proud of the number of people who go to Marx and Friedrich Engels use the word "communistic" college nowadays, but the fact is that most of them in The Communist Manifesto. The word "communistic" emerge from their education with no power of imagin­ now has a Birchite ring about it. But it's a perfectly useful ing alternatives to the hackneyed policy prescriptions of word to describe all those people who aren't substantively liberalism. If anything, their critical powers seem to be communist but are, so to speak, "adjectivally" commu­ impaired by their schooling. They learn the respectable nist-the "useful idiots" Lenin spoke of, the "progress­ noises to make, the fashionable moral poses to strike, the ive forces" contemporary communists speak of, the sort proper subjects of liberal indignation. Of course, a good of people who are always available for peace and civil many of them have the intelligence to resist the condition­ rights marches and popular fronts and broad coalitions. ing process, but this is the tendency of the process itself. In a word, the Left as well as the Right recognizes that When Susan Sontag, an avatar of the Left from way liberals are part of the communist enterprise. Only the back, said that communism is fascism, she shocked the liberals refuse to recognize it. They treat the whole idea intellectual world. It was a step in the right direction, but strictly as a right-wing delusion. Why it should also be despite her good intentions, she was being soft on com­ a communist delusion, they never explain. munism. Communism is worse than fascism by nearly It is not a delusion; it is simply a fact. By and large, every index. That it should be almost taboo to say so in today's liberalism is communistic. That's part of the some quarters is also an index of the state of popular operative meaning of "liberal" now, though it isn't con­ culture today. sidered very nice to say so. But my point isn't to blame Fascism is recognized as a generic evil, and the word liberals. They are only the salient expression of what's serves as a catch-all term for everything the Left hates, wrong with our whole culture of evasion. It is true that from Mussolini to Joe McCarthy to big corporations. unless liberals condemn communism, America should These things aon'f even havetobe related to each other condemn liberalism, because, in a broad sense, liberalism except in the minds of communists and liberals. But while has become the accomplice of communism. the Left makes these imaginary connections, it plays The people I really want to blame are the conser­ down real relations among communist regimes. Com­ vatives, the anti-communists. We are soft on communism munism "is not monolithic." The latest communist in­ by being soft on liberalism. We haven't forced the moral surgency, even if it receives lots of Soviet or Cuban aid, issue: the refusal of liberals to condemn communism and is "essentially indigenous." The sins of the Stalinist all its works and pomps, to acknowledge its victims, to fathers mustn't be visited on the sons, even if the sons are face its full horror. We have been content to call liberals showing every sign of practicing Stalinism-which is to naive and give them credit for good intentions. But it's say, communism. The ease with which the embarrassing too late in the century for naivete. Moral neutrality is not and inherent evils of communism are ascribed to the per­ evidence of good intentions, especially when the neutrali­ sonal eccentricity of Stalin, by the way, is one of the ty is perfunctory and bogus. It's our duty to expose and wonders of leftist dialectics. Stalin seems to have been a morally embarrass the silent accomplices of communism.

Editor, Joseph S. McNamara. Managing Editor, Lissa Roche. Assistant, Patricia A. DuBois. The opinions expressed ~ in Imprimis may be, but are not necessarily, the views of Hillsdale College and its outreach divisions. Copyright © 1986. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is hereby granted, provided the following credit line is used verbatim: "Reprinted by permission from Imprimis, the monthly journal of Hillsdale College, featuring presentations at Hillsdale's • Center for Constructive Alternatives and at its Shavano Institute for National Leadership." ISSN 0277·8432.